All posts tagged money

Without a foundation of financial competence, people run the eventual risk of squandering, spending, or squabbling over money. Because of this it is essential to impart financial competence directly and early.

Having an early and repeated exposure to real money, gives children a direct experience with money. Collect coins and sort them into various sizes so your children are introduced to money. Have them count the total of different coins and bills as an arithmetic and financial exercise. The writer downer here is to introduce them to money itself. Kids relate to the direct experience with it.

Observe your children with money and let them experience it. Be informal yet frequent about your dialogue with them about it. Kids from 5-7 age love games. Games that involve bartering are great activities for them. In this age group introduce them to different ways money is used. Remember the piggy bank? This is a great time to introduce the piggy bank to your children.

8-11-year old children are at a great age to experience setting limits and making choices. Delayed gratification is an important trait to develop. You may have heard of the Stanford experiments to determine the effect of immediate versus delayed gratification. Delayed gratification correlated with higher SAT scores. It also correlated with self- control. In this age group, delayed gratification can be expressed in self-determined goals/objectives and even incentives from you.

Preteens love to make buying decisions. They can handle the concept of limits. Have them set limits for themselves. They can understand ramification and consequences to exceeding budgets. Have them make budgets, not as tedious chores, but as a fun activity with gratifying outcomes.

Teens feel the pressure of their peers. This need of belonging can tug at their financial behaviors. “But, you don’t understand, I need this…now!” is a common plea. Reinforce their sense of responsibility by having your teens communicate the “why” of their, a “why” with consequences. This is also a wonderful time to Introduce them to the concept of earning, trading talents and skills for money that does not come from a family member.

Spreading their wings and testing their independent lives, young adults are often thrown into a world of a financial tightrope on which they may feel unprepared to take on. They have so many needs and wants tugging at them. How do they decide when to spend, when to save, how to invest and donate? This is atime for young adults, if they haven’t already, to identify what money means to them and set up a system they can follow to save, invest, donate, earn, and spend.

At a recent Ivy League School alumnae dinner, the host asked the attendees, to indicate, by a show of hands, if they engaged in financial discussions with their children and/or grandchildren on a monthly or more frequent basis? Of the 100 attendees, how many hands do you think went up? 3 raised their hands.

What did I glean from this? That few families have “money nights” at home. Although 17 states require a “course”, only 5 states require a stand-alone semester in personal finance before graduation from high school. We are not one of them.

It is up to us, the family, to teach kids about money. As Jack Weatherford, former Professor of anthropology at Macalester college in Minnesota, and award the Order of the Polar Star, Mongolia’s highest national honor for foreigners, pointed out: “…money is uniquely human. No version or analog of it exists among any members of the animal kingdom. We have to pass on its meaning to our future money stewards.”

Then how do we talk to our kids about money? Well it depends on their age, inclinations, and maturity. As you introduce money conversations/money nights and money stewardship at home, remember to guide and advise rather than dictate, encourage rather than criticize, be consistent, be flexible, be objective and purposeful about money, keep extended family members in the loop about your financial “rules”, be open to questions, mistakes, and ideas your children might have. Encourage accountability and praise their successes. Money just needs to become another conversation.

When children experience money early they will discover, tweak, and learn from their decisions, mistakes, and challenges. They will become familiar with money and its various facets. They will experience how to use it productively, so they can become stewards of money. This is what we all want.

I find money and food to be similar in many ways. It seems to be difficult for many people to gain control over either and it seems that both topics can become emotionally charged, quickly.

Researchers have studied both, finding that the brain can respond similarly to both money and food behaviors. Surprised? Me neither. But I do find it interesting what the neurosciences have discovered. Let me share a little of that with you.

The brain, you should know, responds to fairness. One study asked their participants if they would agree to someone else’s division of money. If they declined, neither party would receive anything. Offers were made, each amounting to receiving $5 but from different totals. Some were offered $5 out of $10 while others were offered $5 from $20+. And here comes the interesting part: the brain’s reward circuitry was activated only for “fair offers.” In this case receiving $5 out f $10 was registered in the brain as being fairer than receiving $5 out of $23.

This part of the brain, one that reacts to “being fairly treated” is the same part of the brain responding to certain cravings, like for chocolate. Why? It seems to that the brain area that is activated in receiving a fair offer is the same area that is activated when we eat craved foods, like chocolate.

For those who are interested, the regions in the brain that respond to fairness are the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

Money is merely a tool, which means that money itself is not THE culprit. If stays where we leave it, it goes where we move it to. With that as a backdrop, let’s look at two scenarios:

More earnings mean more wealth Y N

Not necessarily as money is easily spent. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that the personal savings rate is at about 3.20% of income with lesser income earners saving more than higher income earners. The data continued to show that we exhibit one of the lowest savings rates of developed countries; only Spain, China, and Australia save less than we do, currently.

Money Can Buy Happiness Y N

Yes, up to a point. Think of what that Powerball lottery could do for you! Science has researched this question and found that how we spend money has an influence on our happiness. Research shows that happiness is increased when we spend money on others more than on ourselves. Does this have to do with experiencing satisfaction? I don’t know, I am merely asking. One study, I remember reading from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western University, indicated that once people earn more than $200,000, their level of happiness did not increase significantly.

Money is very personal. Being personal, it is important that you understand what money means to you, so it can be the sharpest tool in your tool chest, doing what you want it to do for you!

Step back for a minute, and take inventory. The inventory I would like you to take consists of: the ease at which you enter conversations about money.

First, take note of what the intention of the money conversation you are about to begin is. If your intention is to blame, shame, or guilt someone else’s behaviors or actions, this conversation could very well be difficult to have. Who wants to be part of a conversation where accusations or disappoints are hurled? I do not know anyone who wants to be part of that.

Reframe your intention so it is not about how you want the other person to feel, but instead, determine what it is you want to achieve from the conversation. For example, let’s say you do not like the spending habits of your spouse or partner and want to let them know this…yet again. Instead of wanting to express how inappropriate you think it is for them to spend as much as they do, talk about how important it is for you to save. Then ask for their support on how to add a savings to your money activities.

When you know what true intention to the conversation you want to have, you can initiate that conversation without attaching attributes of shame, blame, or attack to the person with whom you are having the money conversation. Instead, you are collaborating to further your intentions rather than looking to release an arrow laced with contempt towards someone else’s feelings.

Second, look at what outcome you want from your money conversation. Using the last example, your preferred outcome may be to start a savings program. It is important to know what outcome you are aiming for so you can use this outcome as your reference and return to it when you use trigger points leading the conversation down rabbit holes to discord.

When money conversations are difficult to initiate, know your underlying intention for the conversation you want to have. From there, identify the outcome you want so you can communicate that to your partner. Remember to return the conversation to its intended focus when it goes astray.

• The habit of saving is itself an education; it fosters every virtue, teaches self-denial, cultivates the sense of order, trains to forethought, and so broadens the mind. -T.T. Munger
Saving is a beneficial life-long exercise.

• You can’t manage what you don’t measure. -Bhaj Townsend
It is important to know what your money is for, so you can determine how to manage it.

• Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. -Epictetus.This still rings true centuries after this Turkish slave, who grew up to be a formidable Greek philosopher, said it.

• Money without meaning is like candy without a wrapper. It’s too easy to devour without restraint-Bhaj Townsend
Now that rings true!

• If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed. –Edmund Burke.
How true this can be.

• This year, money and I will be friends, and not part company as easily and as often as last year. -Bhaj Townsend
An excellent decision to follow through on.

• It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for. Robert Kiyosaki.
Yes, indeed.

• Money is gone, for most families, by the end of the third generation because the system for understanding its purpose wasn’t built, or communicated or sustained. -Bhaj Townsend
This is so sad because it is avoidable.